To conduct a school review is a route that many schools take at apposite times, for a whole range of reasons. It can be a process that will allow you to be forewarned and forearmed for your next inspection, of course, but it can also enable you to take stock of where your school is at any time. Every single setting that has taken advantage of this service from QA South-West has reported how incredibly useful it was.

QA South-West will not, however, perform ‘mocksteds’, in the Ofsted sense of the word, which put teachers under pressure. There is no need. It is the outcomes produced by leaders at all levels that is being examined and *not* individual teachers. Instead, we will assess the quality of teaching in the school overall, in the same way that inspectors would – via looking at the systems in place, looking at outcomes and looking at leadership to ensure that their assessment of the quality of teaching in the school matches what the outcomes are showing. At the same time, we will help staff to realise that they should not be under individual pressure from inspection and that they can, instead, take control of the process and can speak with and learn from, any observers.

In addition to bespoke reviews, QA South-West can put schools in touch with the right people. With the lack of capacity that will soon be apparent in many local authorities, schools need someone they can trust to recommend the right people with the appropriate skills to support them, because that need won’t go away. Approaching the wrong support can be an expensive waste of precious school budgets and we will guarantee the quality of the support with a refund if the support we commission doesn’t live up to your expectations.

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What We Do

Talk for Teaching leads to improved quality of teaching.

QA South-West has helped many schools to improve the quality of their teaching. It's a notoriously difficult thing to do, but through teachers and TAs reflecting together and pooling their collective intelligence, it can be done. 'Talk for Teaching' involves staff watching other teacher's lessons together with colleagues.

We can be there at the start to demonstrate prompts, advise on positive language and to set school protocols, but the process is easily sustainable. Staff soon begin to take ownership of both the process and their own Professional Development. Teachers improve their own teaching and TAs improve their own work. In Dylan William's words; 'they get 'better' at what they do by seeing the work of others and talking about it, as it happens'. The improvements over a year are clearly measurable and the comments from schools and teachers who have participated in this process are just terrific. The impact of the process can be measured by hard edged outcomes: the quality of teaching, learning and assessment being judged to be good, or outstanding, in the school.

QA South-West works with MATS, academy chains, co-operative trusts, learning communities and over 100 individual schools, colleges and Academies. There have been some notable successes for those schools during their inspections and Principals and headteachers, together with staff in the school, felt an awful lot more comfortable about the process!

This was even recognised by Ofsted in one report from Barnsole Primary , a large 3-form entry primary in Gillingham where the team found this, as the school improved rapidly from RI to Outstanding, with Talk for Teaching at the heart of its improvement process:

"Together with the deputy headteacher, the headteacher has led the ‘Talk for Teaching’ programme that has been an instrumental part of transforming the quality of teaching over time. The high-quality teaching in this school now leads to outstanding outcomes for pupils. The school has used this professional development programme to involve leaders, teachers, teaching assistants, governors and other members of the school staff in observing teaching together. They have detailed conversations about the effectiveness of what is seen and how it can be improved. Staff discuss the quality of teaching regularly and freely share ideas about what works well with colleagues."

It was a tremendous pleasure and privilege to work with all the staff and leaders at Barnsole and QA South-West congratulates Sean McKeown and his excellent team on a remarkably rapid transformation of the quality teaching in the school to outstanding.

Do get in touch; call any time. 07808 793673

Paul and QA South-West help schools across England to improve. Distance help is quite possible, especially with SEF support, though face-to-face help is much better, for staff, SLT and headteacher CPD.